LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



■Slielf_.bt\i-SOE< 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



-:-^. 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 



BY 



GEORGE LANSING TAYLOR, D.D. 



i APR .-^o |oo, I 



NEW YORK: 
National Temperance Society and Publication House, 

58 READE STREET. 

1883. 



11 



copyright, 1883, by 
The National Temperance Society and Publication House. 



Edward O. Jenkins, 

Printer and Stereotyper, 

20 North William Street^ New York, 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following paper was originally delivered as 
one of a series of speeches on various phases of 
the Temperance question, before the Connecticut 
State Methodist Convention, at Hartford, January 
30, 1883, the Legislature being then in session, and 
Temperance legislation pending. 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 



The criminality of drunkenness has been ably pre- 
sented to you this afternoon. After what I shall try 
to say to-night, you will hear, from the eloquent gen- 
tlemen who are to follow me, about the forms of 
Temperance legislation, and about our duty to en- 
force such laws as we have. The theme which has 
been assigned by our excellent Committee of Arrange- 
ments to me is a more general one. As they have 
stated it, it reads : 

MORAL SUASION FOR PROMOTING TEMPERANCE — 
LEGAL FORCE FOR SUPPRESSING INTEMPERANCE. 

This, therefore, is the theme on which I have the 
honor to address you this evening. The form of the 
thesis is very suggestive. It has very much the ap- 
pearance of an equation in algebra, where the same 
result will be obtained by transposing the quantities 
from either member to the other, if only the plus and 
minus signs be changed. This question is like the 
balance beam in the scales of justice. We have moral 
suasion to send one scale up, and legal force to send 
the other down. But no matter which does the work, 
so the beam tips toward righteousness, as it is espe- 
cially sure to do if both work together. In this state- 
ment of the question the cause of temperance is like 
a dray horse, with two powerful motives to make him 



6 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

pull, namely, a peck of oats just ahead of his nose, 
and a cat-o'-nine-tails behind him. No matter which 
motive does the work, so it is done, and the load 
moves on. But with both motives it is doubly likely 
to move on. So the chariot of human progress needs, 
and has ever needed, both rewards and punishments — • 
all the motives that can be brought to bear upon 
human character, to secure the advancement of the 
human race. And the temperance cause forms no 
exception to this general law of all human improve- 
ment. 

In the limited time which I can use, and not keep 
you too long from the well-known eloquence of the 
gentlemen who are to follow me, I will ask your at- 
tention to — 

First, the Uses and Successes of Moral Suasion in the 
Promotion of Temperance. 

The use of moral suasion, in any cause, is first to 
produce conviction, and then, through conviction, to 
secure axtion. Conviction without action is incon- 
sistent, cowardly, and barren of all good results. 
Action, without conviction, is feeble, hypocritical, 
and transitory. The first and fundamental work of 
moral suasion is to produce conviction, but its work 
is very lame and imperfect if it can not see conviction 
developed and hardened into action, into living and 
positive facts. 

In this view of the uses of moral suasion, let us see 
how it has been applied, and what is still its proper 
field, in the temperance cause. Its first work was to 
create, in the minds of individuals and of society at 
large, a conviction of the evils, the damage, the peril 
and destruction arising from the use of intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage. Are we aw^are how great was 
this task when the modern temperance reform began ? 
Are we aware what an unheard-of fanaticism was 
John Wesley'^rule against "' buying, selling, or drink- 
ing-j except i^:ases of extreme necessity," in 1743? 
Are we aware that it is not yet ninety years since the 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. *J 

first effective modern temperance document, " A 
Medical Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits 
upon the Body and Mind/' was published by Dr. 
Rush, in Philadelphia, in 1794; and only seventy- 
four years since the first permanent temperance soci- 
ety was founded in Saratoga County, N. Y., and only 
forty years since the first great temperance movement 
— the Washingtonian movement — in 1841-42? We 
must be aware of the history of the movement before 
we can tell whether it is making progress or not, and 
how much. What has moral suasion done since then ? 
What have been its successes ? Why, it is not too 
much to say that a moral revolution, one of the sub- 
limest in history, has been wrought on this subject 
during the last half century. The pure Christian 
philanthropy, which moved Wesley to legislate, and 
Rush to write, and others to organize, has spread like 
a mighty leaven, until to-day it is one of the best 
organized and most powerful moral sentiments in all 
Christendom. Volumes were necessary to name the 
heroic men and women who have labored, the socie- 
ties that have been organized, the literature that has 
been printed, the victims that have been rescued, the 
abuses that have been corrected, the battles that have 
been fought, the victories that have been won, in 
this great campaign. The revolution that has been 
wrought, though by no means yet complete, is liter- 
ally stupendous. Seventy-five years ago, fifty years 
ago, rum was everywhere, mixed up with everything 
in all the events and occasions of human life. It was 
at the birth, the christening, the wedding ; the church, 
the ordination, the communion ; the social party, the 
transient call, the work, the rest, the play, the wor- 
ship, the sick-bed, the death, the funeral of men — of 
all men, high or low, rich or poor, prince or pauper, 
clergy or laity. Christian or infidel, bond or free. Its 
absence, anywhere, was the exception, not the rule, 
and demanded an apology. Now, how vast is the 
change in all this. Now, all the most earnest moral 



8 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

and religious sentiment, and all the best of social 
sentiment and individual opinion and usage, is 
strongly the other way. Now, the offering of liquors 
on any of the ordinary, and nearly all the extraordi- 
nary occasions of life, is an offense against good man- 
ners and good morals, and only not demanding an 
apology because recognized as incapable of an apol- 
ogy. Then, he who did not drink, and offer drink, 
was a fanatic. Now^ he is, in some sense, an outlaw 
who does so. 

Who but the most critical student of history can 
measure what moral suasion has accomplished in the 
way of producing conviction, and the carrying of con- 
viction out into action, in this glorious work ! Many 
of the examples of action, in various lines, produced 
by moral suasion, are among the wonders of history.. 
The whole human apparatus of the Christian Church, 
in its work of transforming the world from darkness 
--to light, is, at the bottom, moral suasion. Some of 
the triumphs of moral suasion in the temperance 
cause have been almost modern miracles. The Father 
Mathew temperance movement began in Ireland in 
1838. Lord Morpeth, British secretary for Ireland, 
reported the following statistics: *^ In 1837 ^he vio- 
lent crimes against the person, from maiming to mur- 
der, were 12,096. Before October, 1838, Father Ma- 
thew had enrolled over 250,000 names on his pledges. 
In 1838 the crimes were 11,058; in 1839, 1^097; in 
1840, 173 ! '' From 12,096 to 173, in three years ! A 
reduction in crime of nearly 7,000 per cent, in three 
years ! That eminent authority. Judge Noah Davis, 
of New York, says : ^^ I feel bound to say that in my 
judgment the efforts of temperance organizations in 
our country .... have done more to prevent crime, 
by spreading and maintaining temperance, especially 
among our rural populations, than all our numerous 
and complicated systems of police." 

Well may we conclude that the increase or decrease 
of crime is one of the most infallible of all thermome- 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 9 

ters to indicate the temperance or intemperance of a 
community. But it is not the only thermometer. 
The increase or decrease of illiteracy is another ther- 
mometer. Maine, Iowa, and Kansas are among the 
States that have the least illiteracy of any in the 
Union, and they are the three foremost in the prohi- 
bition of the liquor traffic. The moral suasion of in- 
telligent temperance brought them up to that high 
level of action. Property is another thermometer of 
temperance. See the growth of property in Maine, 
the pioneer temperance State. In 1840 she had been 
twenty years a State, and her total valuation was less 
than sixty-nine and a quarter million dollars. But in 
ten years more, 1850, she was worth over $100,000,000; 
in i860, $162,000,000 ; in 1870, $224,822,800, almost 
doubling the entire valuation of the State every ten 
years. Every honest man in the State is the richer, 
and can live the cheaper and better, for the absence 
of the rum traffic. In Kansas the valuation of per- 
sonal property alone leaped up $10,250,000 in one 
year, from 1880 to 1881, under the prohibitory law, 
over $4,000,000 greater increase than in any previous 
year in the history of the State, and most of it the 
liquor bill of the State saved and put into the form 
of useful possessions. Rum newspapers in the East 
reported that 40,000 people had left the State on ac- 
count of the prohibitory law. The fact was, as Gov- 
ernor St. John shows, that in eighteen months after 
the adoption of the amendment Kansas gained 
100,000 population, and that of the best class, people 
who went there largely on account of that very law ; 
while the railway earnings of the leading roads in- 
creased 50 per cent, in one year in bringing them 
there. So much for bringing moral suasion up 
through conviction to action. 

There will always be a field for, and demand for, 
moral suasion, in the form of information and exhor- 
tation, in every good work in the world, and in few 
works more than in the temperance work. Society 



lO MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

must be enlightened by it, conscience stimulated, 
good men aroused to action, evil men warned, the 
inebriate rescued, the rising generation instructed, 
the gospel of temperance preached, by pulpit and 
pew and press, and temperance literature produced 
and circulated, the great work organized for action 
in the churches, the Temperance Societies, and Bands 
of Hope, and so kept moving on. All this is moral 
suasion, and it requires patience, perseverance, study, 
preaching, prayer, and last, but not least, pay. It 
must go on forever, like the warfare against any other 
sin. It is the primal and fundamental force in the 
work — one form of preaching salvation to a lost 
world, and as much belonging in the pulpit as any 
other form. Never let the most earnest and radical 
temperance reformers be misunderstood on that point. 
No wise temperance man will be in any danger of 
being honestly misunderstood here. Moral suasion 
will never be obsolete. 

But when we have said all that can be said for 
moral suasion, and for its eternal necessity in any 
and every good cause, still we have only said a small 
part of what ought to be said. The very office and 
function of moral suasion itself still points infallibly 
onward through conviction in the mind to visible out- 
ward action. Action is the only true end of thought, 
the designed incarnation of opinion. And so we 
pass, by irresistible logic, from the use of moral suasion 
for the promotion of temperance to consider, 

Secondly, the Employment of Legal Force for the 
Suppression of Intemperance, 

There is a very striking propriety in the expression 
"■ Legal Force," in the statement of this question. It 
stands out in strong antithesis to that empty simula- 
crum, ^' legal form." We have had, alas, an immeas- 
urable flood of that '' skimble skamble stuff," legal 
form, which never had any legal force about it, and by 
many, at least, of its unwilling creators, was never in- 
tended to have any force of any sort. Legal force, 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. II 

if I know what words mean, signifies the force of 
human society, working in and through the forms of 
law. It means here just what it means everywhere 
else. It means law enacted, and law executed against 
the violators of law. It means the clear, sharp stat- 
ute, and then the sheriff, the court, the trial, the 
verdict, the penalty. It means the law-breaker grabbed 
and shaken by the strong hand and power of the 
State, and made to .suffer the just and certain conse- 
quences of his misdeeds. And it means the highest 
and best moral and patriotic sentiment of the people 
thus formulated into the kind of law needed, and then 
honored as law in its unshrinking execution. That is 
force, the force of the v/hole commonwealth, first or- 
ganized and uttered as law, and then made majestic 
and terrible in its sentence against evil-doers. This 
is what we understand by ^^ legal force,'' as applied to 
the suppression of intemperance. It means just what 
it would mean against horse-stealing, or counterfeit- 
ing, or arson, or murder. It implies that intemper- 
ance is to be made what it really is, a crime, as well 
as a misfortune, and then treated accordingly, especi- 
ally the manufacture and promotion of intemperance. 
And this criminal aspect of intemperance is one of its 
most undeniable and appalling features. 

I. Intemperance is a Crime against Property. It has 
no right to be classed as an industry, a form of pro- 
duction of what is useful to the world. As well call 
counterfeiting, or stealing, or Thuggee, industries, be- 
cause too many people make, or at any rate get, a 
livelihood by them, and because, in some forms or 
stages of human society, they have acquired the im- 
moral respectability of so-called legal sanctions. No, the 
liquor manufacture and traffic, so far as it relates to 
our theme, is no more entitled to be called an indus- * 
try than body-snatching is, because some men have 
made a business of it, and found a market for their 
ghoulish wares. The liquor business is a crime 
against property, and. that on the most colossal scale 



12 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

that was ever seen under the sun. It is the most aw- 
ful financial burden of the civilized world. It seems 
almost a hopeless task to make the unthinking mass 
of mankind give any heed whatever to the tremen- 
dous statistics of intemperance. But, " After us the 
Deluge '' is the cry of knaves, or fools. We must, as 
wise men, look these facts in the face. The most un- 
questionable census reports make the annual retail 
liquor bill of the United States average about $735,- 
000,000, or $200,000 per day — a sum that would buy, 
in the West, 100,000,000 barrels of flour, or two bar- 
rels per head for every man, woman, and child in the 
nation, and deliver it, freight paid, at every door ! On 
the most moderate estimates ever made we pay for 
the mere actual drink $10,000,000,000 every sixteen 
years — a sum more than four times our national debt, 
and more than the entire assessed value of the real 
estate of this nation. And if we add the $4,264,205,- 
907 worth of personal property, then we drink up the 
whole United States, all the land and all the improve- 
ments, the cities, the farms, factories, railroads, ships, 
forests, mines, and every dollar in money or money's 
worth, the entire wealth of this vast nation, engulfed 
and out of sight, in every twenty-five years ! Every 
twenty-five years the whole product of man arid nat- 
ure in this nation is annihilated by rum bills alone, 
and we have to begin over again, not owning the 
clothes on our backs nor the ground we stand on ! 
Stop our national liquor bill, and, with no gain but 
that one saving, the wealth of this nation will double 
in twenty-five years ! Can any human mind compre- 
hend such a waste as that ? But this is only the di- 
rect retail cost of the liquors : nothing counted in for 
all the valuable products destroyed in making the 
liquor, nothing for all the vast indirect cost of the 
consequences of drinking it. But there are 550,000 
able-bodied men constantly employed in producing, 
distributing, and selling liquors, whose wages must be 
counted, and whose work is worse than that of a hos- 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. I3 

tile army of half a million of men in arms against us. 
Then the loss of time and labor by drunkenness and 
tippling, the destruction of grain, the cost of courts, 
prisons, pauperage, disease, insanity, idiocy, caused by 
ram, all go to make an additional annual sum of 
$1,426,455,000. 

Adding together the cost of the drink, the materi- 
als destroyed in making it, and the mere money value 
of its damages, we have a stupendous annual destruc- 
tion of property amounting to $2,162,275,140 ! And 
no account of interest on $1,000,000,000 capital ! This 
sum shows that the retail price of the liquors is just 
about one-third the real amount of cash loss caused 
by drink. As I figure it, this annual outgo for drink 
forms a gulf that swallows up every dollar of wealth — 
the land, and all that stands upon it — in this whole 
nation, every six and a half years! Where are the 
idiots w^ho call it fanatical to call attention to such a 
gulf as this in our path ? The question is too vast for 
any trivial mind to comprehend. I have given some 
little and imperfect attention to the study of Politi- 
cal Economy, and I hesitate not to declare that all 
other questions affecting the wealth of nations, and 
the material advancement of mankind in civilization 
and prosperity, dwindle into insignificance compared 
with this colossal problem of the financial waste and 
ruin of alcoholic drinks. The losses by drink exceed 
the annual labor bill of this country by over $50,000,- 
000, or counting also the price of liquors, by about 
$75,000,000 a year. The price of liquors alone, dur- 
ing the late awful civil v/ar, was greater than the entire 
cost of the war to the North and South combined. 
The world will never know what true material prog- 
ress is till this waste is saved and put on interest to 
the credit of human progress. The amazing, bewil- 
dering speed of the train of development in America 
is a snail's pace compared with what would be its 
sure, safe, and lightning-like velocity, were this awful 
friction off the wheels. As a crime against proper- 



14 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

ty the liquor traffic is the vastest on the globe. All 
the robberies and piracies, all the shipwrecks and 
burnings, all the spoliations of war and the extrava- 
gances of peace, are but a drop in the bucket com- 
pared with this destruction of the fruits of human 
brains and hands. 

And yet the magnitude of the crime of intemper- 
ance against man's work is as nothing compared with 
its havoc, as — ■ 

2. bitemperaiice is a crime against Hmnanity itself. 
In our own happy America alone we have an awful 
standing army of 600,000 habitual drunkards, w^ith 
a militia of one and a half millions of moderate 
drinkers to recruit their ranks. The average life of a 
confirmed drunkard does not exceed ten years, hence 
we have 60,000 drunkards dropping into graves of in- 
famy and despair every year, but the militia come 
forward and join the "' regulars,'' and the ghastly 
ranks are kept full. And another sadder army of 
130,000 widows and orphans of drunkards file past 
these 60,000 graves, as an army of ghosts to follov/ 
the ghosts departed. Rum kills more, all told, every 
year, than any year of our civil war killed. But there 
is no arithmetic for the computation of tears, shames, 
heart-breaks, infamy, despair, and damnation ! We 
can not tabulate these, but there is one book in which 
they are all written down ; and that account must 
one day be faced by those who are responsible for it. 

'^. As a Cause and Fountain of Crime Intemperance 
is the monster of monsters. That illustrious pillar and 
ornament of English law, Sir Matthew Hale, Eng- 
land's great Chief-Justice, to whom good law the 
Vv^orld over owes so much, will not be suspected of 
being a modern ^^ temperance fanatic." And yet, on 
this very subject, he declared two hundred years ago : 

'^ The places of judicature I have long held in this 
kingdom, have given me an opportunity to observe 
the original cause of most of the enormities that have 
been committed for the space of nearly twenty years, 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 1 5 

and by due observation I have found that if the mur- 
ders and manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, 
the riots and tumults, the adulteries, fornications, 
rapes, and other enormities that have happened in 
that time were divided into five parts, four of them 
have been the issue and product of excessive drinking 
— of tavern and ale-house drinking.'' 

What would he have said, after an experience in a 
modern police court, under the modern saloon system ? 
A late inspector of English prisons gives the liquor 
crimes as four-fifths of the whole. The Massachu- 
setts Board of Charities' Report says four-fifths. The 
Canadian House of Commons Committee's Report 
says three-fourths. The chaplain of the Preston 
(England) House of Correction said : '^ Nine-tenths 
of the English crime requiring to be dealt with by 
law arises from the English sin [of intemperance], 
which the law scarcely discourages." 

Dr. Harris, the eminent prison authority, says four- 
teen out of seventeen murder cases which he ex- 
amined were due to intoxicating drinks ! So it is in 
all sorts of crime. And, what is far more terrible, in- 
temperance is the main factor in producing, under 
the laws of heredity, those horrible monstrosities of 
humanity, families and clans of hereditary criminals. 
Thus does this frightful hydra of intemperance coil 
itself like an anaconda around the human race, crush- 
ing fathers and children together, like Laocoon and his 
sons in the coils of the serpents. It is the waster of 
the fruits of human toil, the devourer of the bread of 
the hungry and the clothing of the naked, the briber 
of justice, the corrupter of government, the desolator 
of home, the murderer of happiness, the debaser of 
character, the bereaver of widows, the orphaner of 
children, the poisoner of health, the outrager of virtue, 
the profaner of religion, the hater of holiness, the 
blasphemer of God, the destroyer of both soul and 
body in hell. If the civil States that legalize this 
Gorgon had souls to be damned, there would not be 



l6 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

a civilized government on earth out of hell. If there 
is any one crime of crimes for whose aiders and abet- 
tors, rather than for the devil and his angels ^^ the 
lake which burneth with fire and brimstone " was 
'^ prepared/* it was for the men w^ho fatten on the 
blood and souls of the victims of rum! 

And the power of rum to pervert all the forms and 
agencies of government, and make them its willing 
slaves, is one of its most formidable perils. The 
Congressional Commission upon the management of 
the Mississippi River, reports that about $80,000,000 
are wanted to straighten and subjugate that awful 
flood. But we see rum stand in the halls of our 
National Congress at this very session, with $80,000,- 
000 in its hand as one single item of its '^ business,'' 
and men that have shaped the revenues of this nation 
are growing rich by doing its bidding. Is it not time 
to be alarmed at its political power ? The annual 
sweep of the Mississippi flood is harmless compared 
with the perennial, ever-rising, fiery deluge of rum, 
that threatens to engulf our government and nation. 
The first murmur of rebellion against our govern- 
ment was the ^^ Whisky Rebellion" in Pennsylvania 
in 1794. To put down that rebellion Washington 
sent gallant Harry Lee with the old '' Continentals." 
Now the Whisky Rebellion captures the United 
States Senate in a body, and where is the Washington 
to put it down? 

And another momentous question meets us here. 
How shall the three-quarters of a million citizens 
which emigration annually casts upon our shores be 
moulded safely into the national life, with such a 
pow^er as this to bid for their votes, and get the most 
of them, too, as soon as they can vote. Such a peril 
grows and looms to more colossal proportions every 
hour it exists. 

And yet, with a stony-faced and stony-hearted 
audacity, these men cry out against legislation on this 
subject, as an interference with their '•' private rights." 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 1/ 

Immortal shame to John Stuart Mill for putting into 
his great work on Civil Liberty, pages 170-173, a 
most contemptible whine about the ^^ usurpations 
upon the liberty of private- life " by the prohibitory 
statutes of some of the United States of America, 
because, forsooth, they make it difficult for men to 
obtain the means for committing alcoholic suicide, 
after beggaring their wives and children ! Such a 
plea, in the light of this nineteenth Christian century, 
is the veriest drivel of intellectual babyhood, utterly 
unworthy of that noblest of all human sciences, 
Political Economy, and of many of Mill's contributions 
to that science. Well has the eminent Anglican 
scholar and churchman. Canon Farrar, replied : '' Man's 
liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty 
becomes the curse of his neighbors." But Mill him- 
self declares in another place, ''' The liberty of the in- 
dividual ends, however profitable to hhnself^ when it 
becomes fatal and ruinous to another.'* Why could 
he not see that this is the very principle on which 
prohibitory legislation is based ? An eminent states- 
man of Missouri has aptly declared : ** There are 
other personal liberties besides those of the wine- 
drinker and the rum-seller." All honor to brave 
Bishop Ireland, of Minnesota, who has prohibited 
Roman Catholics in his diocese from acting as saloon- 
keepers. May he have many imitators in Church and 
State. 

The right and duty of government to legislate for 
the suppression, as well as for the mere regulation of 
the liquor traffic, is implied in every law ever made 
on the subject. The power to license implies the 
power to withhold license, /. ^., to prohibit for cause. 
During the last 200 years over 600 separate acts of 
Parliament in England alone, have attested and as- 
serted the right and duty of such legislation. As to 
the stale old plea of ^^ sumptuary legislation " nine- 
tenths of those who use that objection are utterly ig- 
norant of the history and meaning of ^'sumptuary 



1 8 MORAL SUASION AND LEGAL FORCE. 

laws/' and the other tenth know that the objection, 
as applied to this case, is wholly fallacious and false. 
As well object to fence laws, dog laws, gunpowder 
laws, nitro-glycerine and dynamite laws, water-works 
laws, fire-limits laws, nuisance laws, quarantine laws, 
small-pox laws, laws ag^ainst set guns, opium and ar- 
senic laws, as object to laws regulating or suppressing 
a more terrible nuisance and pest and peril than all of 
these put together. Where is the sense, the states- 
manship, the common fairness, of making, and, osten- 
tatiously enforcing, laws against all the errors and 
crimes of poor fallen humanity, and then, by lack of 
law, or by law that is worse than none, leaving this 
fruitful and diabolical instigator of crime to work its 
baleful spell throughout the land ; and to make 
criminals by wholesale, as a recognized and lucrative 
line of business, with every rum-shop a college of 
crime. Such a thing is a monstrosity in legislation, and 
itself a crime against human society. The need of 
better legislation, and that of the most searching and 
repressive sort, is as plain, and as tremendous, as are 
the evils wrought by this infernal traffic. By how 
much it is the hundred-headed hydra, the dire Chi- 
maera of wickedness, by so much is it the duty of all 
good government, especially in all Christian States, to 
be " a revenger, to execute wrath '' upon it, and to re- 
member that the ^* sword " of civil power is a tremen- 
dous trust, not innocently to be borne in vain. Nobly 
has Justice Grier, of the U. S. Supreme Court, held : 
'^ It is not necessary to array the appalling statistics 
of misery, pauperism, and crime which have their ori- 
gin in the use and abuse of ardent spirits. The 
police power, which is exclusively in the State, is 
competent to the correction of these great evils, and 
all measures of restraint or prohibition necessary to 
effect that purpose, are within the scope of that au- 
thority, and if a loss of revenue should occur to the 
United States from a diminished consumption of ar- 
dent spirits, she will be a gainer a thousandfold in the 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. I9 

health, wealth, and happiness of her people.'* All 
honor to Queen Victoria, and her noble minister, 
Gladstone, for the moral courage that, in the late 
Queen's speech to Parliament, congratulated the 
English nation upon a ^' diminution of the revenue 
from intoxicating drinks," arising from a diminution 
in their use ! 

And who, and where, it may well be asked, in the 
light of this Christian land, are the inhuman wretches 
who are ready to say : ^^ It's none of my business. 
Men may drink it or let it alone. I don't make them 
buy it or sell it. I have nothing to do with it." 
This is the hellish answer of Cain : ^^ Am I my 
brother's keeper'? " Alas, who was the ^^ ^c:eeper" of 
over six hundred Aleuts killed outright on the Alaskan 
Island of St. Lawrence, by white traders who went 
there from Honolulu, as alleged, and sold them 
whisky, and kept them drunk all the sealing season, 
and. then left them to starve and freeze to death in 
the long Arctic winter. Two hundred and fifty men, 
women, and children in one village, every soul in it, 
were found lying stark frozen, in heaps, as shown by 
the ghastly photographs taken by the revenue cutter 
Corwin. Such is the protection the American eagle 
(better say vulture !) is giving to her poor pagan 
children in Alaska ! Russia kept the rum-fiend from 
them, America lets him loose ! ^^ None of my busi- 
ness, away off there among those dirty Indians ! '* 
But perhaps you are a guest in the blazing Newhall 
House in Milwaukee, and must burn in that fiery 
vortex, or jump to the frozen pavement from a sixth- 
story window, all because of the rum-fiend malice of 
a drunken bartender below ! Whose business is 
it then ? A rich man in St. Louis scornfully refused 
financial aid to a Temperance mass meeting recently. 
** Gentlemen, it's not my business!" A few days 
later, in his splendid carriage, he is driven to the rail- 
way station to meet his wife and two beautiful grown 
daughters, coming home on the Mississippi lightning 



20 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

express. There is a buzz at the station of an ^^ Acci- 
dent " — ^' Twenty-five railways converge here — thinks 
he — not Hkely to be Mississippi ! " But he is troubled 
— inquires — ^^ Oh ! — it is the Mississippi lightning ex- 
press — twenty-five miles down the road." — " Tele- 
graph ! Here ! Wire the superintendent — Fll give 
$500 for an extra engine ! '' Lightning flashes back 
*' No ! " Again — ^* Must have it — $1,000 for an en- 
gine ! '* " Can't — last one gone with doctors and nurses 
to the wreck ! '' Ah — it's his ^' business " 7tow ! What 
are banks and stocks now ? A white-faced, ghastly 
man walks the platform one eternal hour — The wreck- 
ing train rumbles slowly to platform — He looks — - 
Mangled remains of wife and one daughter — dead — 
other daughter dying ! A childless widower in oile 
minute ! Why ? — One quart of whisky drank by a 
train-hand fifty miles away ! This is the awful result ! 
Whose business is the temperance cause now ? And 
whose business when 60,000 men die drunkards, leav- 
ing 130,000 widows and orphans every year? '' Grog 
rations " at sea — we all go to sea nowadays, as pas- 
sengers. A great staunch Cunarder founders, the 
only one lost for years, with all on board, save enough 
to tell the tale of a drunken man's work — General 
order : 

** Circular No. 7.— " Office of Cunard Line, ) 

7TH November, 1882. \ 
'' The Board of Directors have decided that after the ist of 
December, proximo, the allowance of rum to seamen and firemen 
on board the company's ships will be abolished and coffee sub- 
stituted therefor." 

Amen! "The world moves," when John Bull 
afloat gives up his grog. When will John Bull ashore 
do the same, and Brother Jonathan stretch a brawny 
hand across the salt, and shake hands with him on 
that, and swear that this awful curse shall be no 
more? 

But how is this to be broug^ht about on sea or land } 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 21 

Manifestly by the continual co-operation of moral 
suasion and legal force, or by the continual transmuta- 
tion of moral suasion into legal force. The attempt 
to divorce these two things is their mutual annihila- 
tion. To cry up moral suasion, and at the same time 
cry down legal force, is to cry up sowing, but cry 
down reaping; to cry up fire and powder, but cry 
down the explosion. In fact, who ever knew an ob- 
jector to repressive legislation, to be a zealous mis- 
sionary of moral suasion. On the contrary, who 
ever knew a true and zealous moral suasionist 
who did not confess the need of something more. 
Father Mathew, the most eloquent and successful 
apostle of moral suasion, felt constrained to write : 
^' The principle of prohibition seems to me to be the 
only safe and certain remedy for the evils of intem- 
perance." And so Cardinal Manning declares: "It 
is mere mockery to ask us to put down drunkenness 
by moral and religious means, when the Legislature 
facilitates the incitements to intemperance on every 
side. You might as well say to the captain of a ship, 
^Why don't you pump the water out ?' when you 
yourselves are scuttling the ship in every direction." 

But one of the best statements of this great truth 
I have met with is that of New Hampshire's noble 
statesman, the Hon. Henry W. Blair, in his speech in 
the House of Representatives at Washington, on the 
joint resolution introduced by him, proposing an 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States 
in regard to the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
liquors. Mr. Blair said : 

" Laws to protect society against intoxication inev- 
itably grow out of moral suasion, if there is enough 
of it to arouse the general conscience and the intelli- 
gent apprehension of the people to the enormous 
losses and wrongs inflicted by alcohol upon society at 
large. Thus it is that the call for more of moral sua- 
sion, and less of law, is a contradiction of terms. 



22 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

These forces are in harmony, like a father and son in 
a partnership ; the law steps in and enlarges and per- 
petuates the business which moral suasion has es- 
tablished after years of indefatigable industry upon 
the platform, through the press, and by private solici- 
tation and appeal. And for any person to cry out upon 
a law against the use of intoxicating liquors in society, 
which could never have been enacted at all but in 
consequence of moral suasion, and say that it injures 
the cause because you can not compel men to do right 
against their will, is to say that all crime, and every 
public evil, shall go free of the law [because perfect 
obedience is not secured] ; not only that, but that 
society shall abandon all conservative and preventive 
means for the protection of those who come after us ; 
that not only shall the law abandon the present, but 
the rising generation, and, in fact, consistency will re- 
quire that in the end moral suasion itself must be 
abandoned, since its inevitable result is a formal em- 
bodiment of its teachings in general law, as soon as 
it has produced a strong public sentiment upon which 
law can rest — and which will enforce the law. The 
unrestricted use, and effect, of distilled spirits, con- 
stitute public evils of such a nature as to not only 
justify but compel the interposition of the law." 

In another paragraph in the same speech, dwelling 
upon the ^' right and necessity of legislation," Mr. 
Blair adds : 

** The absolute necessity of prohibition or regula- 
tion of the traffic in intoxicating drinks has been 
demonstrated in every civilized country. The ques- 
tion has been raised and settled in the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and by the highest tribunals in 
almost every State of the Union, if not in all. It is 
too late to deny the power, the right, and the neces- 
sity of such legislation. It is only a question of the 
jurisdiction by which it shall be enacted, and the ex- 
tent to which it shall be carried." 



MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 23 

And now, gentlemen and ladies, I must leave this 
argument with you, for whatever it may be thought 
worth, as in some sort, a foundation for those who' 
shall follow me in this programme ; and to Vv^hom is 
worthily entrusted the task of advising as to what 
forms legislation ought to take to best accomplish the 
end designed. In concluding, let me repeat, and let 
us never forget, that the ultimate eitd of all moral 
suasion is to bring about action ; to create, and' organ- 
ize, and carry through, and complete, the sublime 
moral and material revolution already begun in this 
matter. Its end is not merely to save the victims 
after they are victims, but to stop the making of 
victims. All honor to the ambulance^corps that fol- 
lows the gory trail of this monster with lint and 
bandages to bind up his torn and mangled victims, 
and save all that can be saved. The rescuing tem- 
perance societies have a humane and worthy work. 
Wounded men, mangled men, are worth saving. But 
so much the more are sound and whole men, as yet 
untorn and unshamed by this fiend, worth saving. 
And so I bid you God-speed with the ambulance 
corps, but I want to fight! I want to sound the 
bugles ! I want a park of legislative artillery to 
thunder out, and wheel into line, and unlimber for 
action. I want to mount a Krupp hundred-pounder 
steel rifle, and let the horses fly ! I want to overtake 
this devastating monster, and put an hundred-pound 
dynamite shell of ^* Legal Force " through his vitals, 
and scatter him to the winds ; or leave his skeleton 
to bleach on the sands of time, beside those of 
slavery, and piracy, and feudal bondage, and witch- 
burning, and Mormonism, and other monsters yet to 
fall. 

Does some one say, ^* We shall never live to see 
this." That may be. Probably some of us are not 
worth living to see it, have never earned the sight. 
But as sure as Jehovah '' sitteth upon the circle of 



24 MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 

the earth/* that victory shall come. It must come. 
The world is lost, without. It is absolutely necessary 
to the advancement of man, and the necessary is al- 
ways possible. The necessary is always certain. The 
battle will be that of Gog and Magog, long and sore. 
But the child is now born who shall see the victory. 
But for us, win or lose, there is but one thing to do, 
and that is to stand in our place, and fight on, while 
we live to fight. And when, at last, we fall, as fall 
we all must, let it be with all our armor on, sword in 
hand, a length toward the foe. 



-3^^*^- 




MORAL AND LEGAL FORCE. 



BY 



GEORGE LANSING TAYLOR, D.D. 




NEW YORK: 
National Temperance Society and Publication House, 

58 READE STREET. 

1883. 




Constitutional Amendment 

IMI-A-IsTTT-A-Xj. 

12n)0, JOO pages. Price, cloth, 50 cts.; paper cover, 25 cts. 
By Mrs. J. ELLEN FOSTER, 

OIF XO-VsT-A.^ 

Superintendent of Department of Legislation of the Woman*s Nationa. 
Christian Temperance Union, 



The National Temperance Society has just published a new 
and very valuable Handbook or Manual for all workers in the line 
of a Constitutional Amendment for the prohibition of the manu- 
facture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. 

This little volume contains the full argument and reasons for the 
Amendment by States, and also by the National Government, with 
full and complete answers to popular objections against the same. 
It also contains 

SUGGESTIONS, EXPLANATIONS, AND DIRECTIONS, FORM 
OF PETITIONS, MEMORIALS, CONSTITUTIONS, FOR- 
MULA OF AMENDMENT, MODES OF OPERATION 
IN DIFFERENT STATES, ETC. 

IT^ ALSO CONTAINS A 

Constitutional Amendment Catechism 

FOR 

^Wottian^d Unions, Bands of Hope, and otlicr 
Temperance Organizations, 

presenting the entire question in form of question and answer, which 
should be in the hands of every person interested in the Temperance 
work. 

Mrs. Foster is so well known as the gifted attorney, whose inde- 
fatigable labors contributed so largely to secure Constitutional Pro- 
hibition in her own State, that she needs no introduction to the 
friends of Temperance in America. The book is invaluable to every 
friend of Constitutional Prohibition. Send for it. 

Frice^ only 25 ccuts iu Paper Cover. Address 

J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 

5» RBADK STRHBX, I^KMT YORK. 



New Temperance Publications. 



READINGS AND RECITATIONS. 

To meet the demand for Readings, Recitations, and Declamations, the National Temper 
fcnce Society have published the following valuable works, which should be in the hand« o1 
• every Temperance worker in the laud. 

Tlie IVatioiial Temperance 

Orator. 12mo, 288 pp. By Mis3 L. Pen- 
ney $ ( .00 

This book contains articles by the ber;t 
temperance writers of the day, poems, reci 
tations, readings, dialoo:ues, and choice ex- 
tracts from speeches of some of the ablest 
temperance speakers in the country, for the 
Qsc of all temperance workers, Lodges, Di- 
visions, Bands of Hope, etc., etc. 

The Teiiiperance Speaker. 

By J. N. Stearns 75 

This book contains 288 pages of declama- 
tions and dialogues suitable for Sunday and 
day-schools. Bands of Hope, and temperance 
organizations. 



Reacliiig^s and Reeitatiofis, 

No. 1. 12mo, 96 pp. By Miss L. Penney. 

Cloth, 60c.: paper cover 25 

A collection of new and first-class articles 
and selections, both prose and verse, em- 
bracing argument and appeal, pathos and 
humor, by the foremost temperance advo- 
cates, suitable for declamation, recitation, 
pubJic and parlor readings. 



Reading's and Reeitations, 

No. 2. 12mo, 96 pp. By Miss L. Penney. 

Cloth, 60c; paper cover. 25 

A collection of new and first-class articles 
and selections, both prose and verse, em- 
bracing argument and appeal, pathos and 
humor, by the foremost temperance advo- 
cates, su'table for declamation, recitation, 
public and parlor readings. 

Readings and Recitations^ 

No. 3. l2mo, 96 pp. By Miss L. Penney. 
Just published. Cloth, 66c; paper cover 25 
The favor with which Nos. 1 and 2 were 
received and the repeated calls for another 
have resulted in the preparation of No. 3, 
with many original articles from first-class 
authors. 

Juvenile Temperance Reciter, — 

16mo, 64 pp 10 

A new and valuable collection of 66 recita- 
tions, declamations in prose and verse, for 
use In Sunday-schools, Bands of Hope, and 
other children's organizations, written by 
some of the best writers in the land. 



MUSIC ^ND SONOr BOOKS. 

The National Temperance Society publish the following Music and Song Books, adapted 
to all Temperance Gatherings in the land : 



Biis^e Notes for tlie Temperaiieo 

Army. Edited by W. P. Sherwin and J. N. 
Stearns. Price, paper covers, 30 cts. ; 

boards 35 

Paper covers, per doz., post-paid, $3.40 ; 
board covers, $4.00. 

A new collection of Songs, Quartets, and 
Glees, adapted to the use of all temperance 
gatherings, Glee Clubs, etc., together with the 
Odes of the Sons of Temperance and Good 
Templars. 

Temperance Cliimes. Edited by Wm. 
B. Bradbury and J. N. Stearns. Price, in 

paper, 30 cts.; board covers 35 

Paper covers, per dozen, post-paid, $3.40 ; 
board covers, $4.00. 

A Temperance Hymn and Tune Book of 128 
pages, comprising a great variety of new mu- 
sic, Glees, Songs, and Hymns, designed for 
the use of Temperance Meetings and Organi- 
zations, Bands of Hope, Glee Clubs, and the 
Home Circle. 

Ripples of Song. Price, in paper cov- 
ers, 15 cts.; per dozen $1.60; per hun- 
dred 12.00 

Board cover?, 20 cts.; per dozen, $2.20 ; 
per hundred. $18. 

A new collection of 64 pages of Temperance 
Hyran-s and Songs, designed for children and 

Jouth in Sabbath-schools. Bands of Hope, 
nvRDile Templars, Cadets of Temperance. 



Cold Water Templars, and other Juvenile 
Societies, containing 90 popular hymns set 
to appropi'iate music. The Odes and Music 
of the Juvenile Templars are given in full. 
Temperance Hymn -Book. Price, 
paper covers, 12 cts each ; per huu. 10.00 
Board covers, 15 cts each; per hun. 13.00 
The new Temperance Hymn-book, 32mo, 
128 pages, contains about 150 Songs and 
Hymns set to old and familiar tunes, giving 
the first line of music to each, so that any 
ore can start the tune, and when started, 
every one can sing without note. It is es- 
pecially adapted to temperance prayer-meet 
ings and all social and public gathering: 

Band of Hope IVIelodles. Price, ii 

paper 10 

Containing fifty pages of Songs with Mu- 
sic, adapted to Bands of Hope, Juvenile 
Temperance Societies, etc. 
National Temperance Hymn and 
Song Book. For all temperance organiza 
lions and meetings. About 150 hymns and 
songs. Words only. 64 pp., 12mo. Single 

copies 10 cents ; per hundred 10.t>0 

A Ijlttle Bow of Blue. A rue w sons 
and chorus, in sheet-music form. VVorda 
by Edward Carswell, and music by A. Laiiir, 

Esq. Price 3 5 

It is dedicated to the Reform Clubs o* 
America, and is just the song for the times 



Addre98 J. N. STBAUNSr ^uhllshing Agents 



68 Reade Street, New York. 



NatlonaJ Temperance Society. 



Hon. WM. E. DODGE, WM. D. PORTER, J. N. STEARNS, 

President, Treasurer. Cor. Sec. and Pub. Agent 

THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, organized in 1805 for the purpose of snp- 
plymg a soiin i and able temperance literature, nave already stereotyped and published 
over one thousand publications of all sorts and sizes, from the one-page tract up to the 
bound volume of 1,000 pages. This list comprises books, tracts, and pamphlets, coiitainiDP 
eesaya, stories, sermons, argument, statistics, history, etc., upon every phase of the ques- 
tion. Special attention has oeen given to the department 

FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 

One hundred and nineteen volumes have already been issued, written by some of the best 
a.ithors In the land. These have been carefully examined and approved by the Publication 
Committee of the Society, representing the various religious denominations and temperance 
organizations of the country, which consists of the following members: 

PETER CARTER, Rev. A. G. LAWSON, A. D. VAIL, D.D., 

Rev. W. T. SABINE, T. A. BROUWER, R. R. SINCLAIR, 

A. A. ROBBINS, D. C. EDDY, D.D., JAMES BLACK, 

Rev. HALSEY MOORE, J. B. DUNN, D.D. J. N. STEARNS. 

Rev. ALFRED TAYLOR, 

The volumes have been cordially recommended by leading clergymen of all denominations 
and by numerous Ecclesiastical bodies and Temperance Organizations all over the land. 
They should be in every Sunday-school Library. The following is a list of some of the lateel 
and the best issued : 

Sunset on iflount Blanc. By Mrs. M. F. Martin. i2nio, 

456 pages $1 50 

IHabel's IVork, By Mrs. S. M. I. Henry. i2mo, 468 pages.. . 1 50 
Voice of*tlie Home (Tlie). By Mrs. S. M. I. Henry. i2mo, 

405 pages 1 25 

Her Inheritance. By Laurie Loring. i2mo, 352 pages 1 25 

Lost Estate (Tlie). By Mrs. J. P. Ballard. i2mo, 218 pages. . 1 OO 
Rex Ring'gOfld's ^Cliool. By Rev. Pliny Steele Boyd. i2mo, 

399 pages 1 25 

Prince of Oood Fellows (Ttie). By Margaret E. Wilmer. 

i2mo, 367 pages 1 25 

Secret of Victory. By Miss M. E. Winslow. i2mo, 170 pages. 75 

Liittle Sine Jacket* By M. A. Paull. i2mo, 212 pages T5 

Onr Homes. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. i2mo, 426 pages l 50 

Rose Clifton. By Mrs. E. J. Richmond. j2mo, 426 pages I 50 

Over the Way. By Mrs. H. J. Moore. i2mo, 213 pages 1 00 

IVIiite Hands and W^hite Hearts. By Ernest Gilmore. 

1 2mo, 278 pages 1 00 

Amid the Shadows. By Mrs. M, F. Martin. i2mo, 412 pages. 1 25 

Song:lit and Saved. By Miss M. A. Paull. i2mo, 396 pages.. I 25 

Consecrated. By Ernest Gilmore. i2mo, 434 pages 1 50 

Bread and Beer. By Mary D. Chellis. i2mo, 381 pages. ... 1 25 

The Brewer's Fortnne. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 425 pp. 1 50 

His Honor the Mayor. By Helen E. Chapman. 395 pages.. 1 25 

From Father to S4>n. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 420 pages.. 1 25 

The Pied«-e and the Cross. By Mrs*. S. M. I. Henry. 2^6 pp. 1 00 

Alice Grant. By Mrs. E. J, Richmond. i2mo, 352 pages 1 25 

The Queer Home in Rug^hy Conrt. By Miss Annette L. 

Noble. i2mo, 45 pages 1 50 

No Hang^er. By M uy J. Hedges. i2mo, 360 pages 1 25 

Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 

58 Heads Street^ New York City. 



MiOsidi^^^ 



nn^iP'^^^ O^ CONGRESS 



:)NGRESS ^1 

021 048 041 9 



